Wednesday, January 13, 2010

What's Happening in January?

You really can’t do better than Alec Guinness in “Our Man in Havana” at the Normal Theater on January 14th and 15th, although Humphrey Bogart, all sweaty and consumed with greed in John Huston’s “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” may be a contender. You haven’t lived till you’ve heard Mr. Bogart growl, “Nobody puts one over on Fred C. Dobbs.” “Sierra Madre” hits the big screen on the 16th and 17th.

Community Players, which is in the middle of its 87th season, offers “Dearly Departed,” a comedy by David Bottrell, which opened on the 7th and runs till the 23rd.

Urbana’s Station Theatre opens Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros” on January 14th, running till the 30th. It’s a fine little piece of Theater of the Absurd and considered by many to be a comment on groupthink. Or Communism, Fascism, Nazism or any other movement that seems like a mindless herd of rhinoceri to you. Interesting enough, ISU is also doing “Rhinoceros” in March, so this may be your opportunity to compare and contrast.

If you have a lovely daughter, you may want to check out Herman’s Hermits (starring Peter Noone, just like in the Old Days) at the Bloomington CPA on January 22nd . Or, if Lake Wobegon is more your style, “An Evening with Garrison Keillor” of Prairie Home Companion fame may be just the ticket. That’s also at the CPA, one night only, on January 25th.

1 comment:

We saw Garrison Keillor at the BCPA and enjoyed it very much. The audience was most supportive. I found the opening new sonnets he's written that were SUNG interesting at first and then....well, ho hum. He definitely had the right topic on living life to it's fullest, where he included his own recent brush with death when he had a stroke. It was moving and lots of mental "takeaways." He said love is a lifeboat and these are the tips for survival in a lifeboat: 1)Don't do anything sudden, 2) Don't talk of disastrous things, 3)Give the other person some space to move around, and 4) Pretend you're somewhere else.